Blogging in Southwest Virginia

Amy Alls

Amy Alls works a job in the back end of a local bank, and sings on weekends. She's very tiny and has a huge voice. Hear her at Roanoke's No Shame Theater. Read her lyrics and poetry at Miss Amy's Wasted Life v.002.

Rhett Fleitz

His is an unofficial site dedicated to the past, present, and future of the Firefighters of Roanoke Fire-EMS department and IAFF local #1132 (Roanoke Firefighters Association). The site, he says, will include incidents, news, articles, history, and events involving and effecting Roanoke's bravest.

Jeff Artis

Much as Jeff Artis would protest, he's one of Roanoke's community activists, acting as one of the aggressive and persistent voices in Northwest Roanoke. His blog adds to his cause.

Keith Clinton

Keith Clinton and his wife have set forth to take photos of the Roanoke that was, the Roanoke that is, and the Roanoke that is to come. What they found and reveal in their Roanoke Found blog were more questions than answers and more mysteries than they anticipated.

David Fuller

The Roanoke-based evangelical missionary is linked here to a blog he runs on his Answering the Call Web site.

Brian Patton

Brian Patton is from Clintwood, a small town in far Southwest Virginia's Appalachians. He has maintained his personal blog for more than a year and blogs about politics, his experience in law school, life in and around Dickenson County. When it comes to politics, he leans way left, and speaks loudly for Tim Kaine. And if that's not enough, he has set up a blog content aggregator for Southwest Virginia.

Lars Hagen

Lars Hagen is a retired engineer who lives in Franklin County at Smith Mountain Lake. After reading The RoanokeTimes paper for 15 years, he says it is clear that their slant on the information they publish is clearly not even close to neutral or balanced on many economic, social and political issues. His blog, The Roanoke Slant, is intended to be a brief diary of some examples of the paper's slant by contrasting it with an opposing view. Upon review of these items over a period of time one might conclude that there is an undeniable pattern of behavior.

Fortescue W. Hopkins

This 85-year-old retired tax lawyer from Roanoke has a couple blogs in which he advocates a long-time cause: the flat tax. Read all about it at thefortescueflattax.myblogsite.com and fixtheusconstitution.myblogsite.com

Elliot Broyles (aka Smelly Kat)

Smelly Kat from The Mornin' Thang on K92 radio in Roanoke has a blog, KisforKat.com. In it, he talks about pretty much anything, from American Idol, visits to Smith Mountain Lake and even politics sometimes.

Colleen Redman

I write "Loose Leaf: Notes from a Writer's Journal" to synthesize what I'm learning at the time, whether it be poetry, a political commentary, or a letter to my mother in Hull, Mass., where I'm originally from. Whenever I don't know exactly what it is I'm doing and it borders on wasting my time, I call it research. 'Dear Abby, How can I get rid of freckles?' was my first published piece at the age of 11.

Doug Thompson

Take a tour through the Blue Ridge Mountains with Capitol Hill Blue founder and publisher Doug Thompson. His personal commentary and photography are on Blue Ridge Muse. He's a Floyd Countian who returned home after 40 years on the road as a journalist, including a gig at The Roanoke Times from 1965-69, he says.

Andrew Cohill

The former director of the Blacksburg Electronic Village (from 1993 to 2002) has been blogging for more than three years. He writes about technology from a community perspective.

Tami and Craig Warman

We're Tami and Craig Warman, a couple of BodyPump instructors from Blacksburg, Virginia. BodyPump is a group fitness program offered at several clubs around Roanoke and the New River Valley, and in thousands of clubs around the world. We use our blog to kick around BodyPump releases and music, various fitness topics, and anything else we decide to pontificate about!

Fred First

Fred First authors his nature-journal photo-blog from a remote and beautiful part of Floyd County. A 50-something photographer, biology teacher and physical therapist, Fred is a regular essayist on WVTF and pens a twice-monthly column in the Floyd Press. He describes his three-year-old weblog, Fragments from Floyd, as a "conversation on our front porch that has brought folks here from far off-mountain." He is an enthusiastic advocate of the weblog as a modern-day literary medium, business card and portfolio, as well as for its rich potential to build bridges of community across cultures, regions and the age-spectrum.

Pat Matthews

A graduate of Virginia Tech, Pat is the CEO and co-founder of Webmail.us, a technology firm headquartered in the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center. His blog, Small Town, Big Ideas, gives readers an insider’s view into his journey as an Internet executive in Southwest Virginia. He provides readers, he says, with deep insights into his experiences as well as tips and guidance on everything from best interview practices to sales and management advice.

David Sobotta

A view from the mountain is David Sobotta's collection of  thoughts during his first year of life after working for Apple Computer. He lives in Roanoke, works for a Blacksburg tech company while writing or trying to figure out how to spend a few years fishing on the North Carolina coast. He's working on a couple of books, one of which is titled "From Mayberry to Nova Scotia and Back."

L.H. Rivera

In L.H. River's BareVisions, you're country when the smell of horse manure makes you homesick, says L.H. Rivera, who signs off, saying, "And I looked to the horizon and saw there was a silent guardian watching over me."

Mark Hoback

He says he's new to Salem, having moved from the D.C. area about six months ago. His blog, Fried Green al-Qaedas, is two and a half years old, and resides in the Salon blogs community. Content-wise, you could probably put it in the Current Events category, but loosely. Very loosely. He also edits what he says is a fairly popular webzine, Virtual Occoquan, which focuses on hard-to-categorize bloggers.

Steven Minor

I am a huge fan of the Roanoke paper, even though there is no more Ed Shamey and not enough Beth Macy and I can't get daily delivery in the morning since I moved out into the county (of Washington). Mr. Minor is a lawyer by trade. Read all about it in his law blog.